NAACP News

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New NAACP Seeing More Gay, Diverse Chapter Leaders

WORCESTER, Mass. -- The NAACP's newly revived Worcester chapter elected a 28-year-old openly gay black man as its president this month. In New Jersey, a branch of the organization outside Atlantic City chose a Honduran immigrant to lead it last year. And in Mississippi, the Jackson State University chapter recently turned...

Martin Luther King's Peace Legacy Praised After Arizona Shootings

ATLANTA -- The nation observed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday on Monday with thousands volunteering for service projects and more reflecting on his lessons of nonviolence and civility in the week following the shootings in Arizona. Six people were killed in Tucson and Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle...

Maine Gov. Changes MLK Plans After Telling NAACP, 'Kiss My Butt'

WATERVILLE, Maine -- Gov. Paul LePage changed his Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend plans and showed up at a breakfast honoring the slain civil rights leader Monday, days after he said critics of his decision to skip other events could "kiss my butt." He even joined some of the participants in an African dance. The...

Civil War, 150 Years Later, Still Divides Our Nation

MANASSAS, Va. – When National Park Service rangers fired a New Year's cannon shot at this Civil War battleground to hail the arrival of 2011, they also ushered in the start of a four-year commemoration of the war's 150th anniversary. The events include a multitude of battle re-enactments, lecture series, readings,...

Kidney Donation Set as Condition of Miss. Sisters' Parole

If two Mississippi sisters serving life in prison for an armed robbery that netted $11 want to go free, one will have to donate a kidney to the other. Gov. Haley Barbour has pardoned Gladys and Jamie Scott, black women whose case has been a cause celebre among civil rights activists. But to be released, Gladys, 36, must...

Background on NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination".

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